Crickets chirping indeed. I am almost afraid to ask. Anyway, Lon said it well when he advised hunkering down for the long wait. On the other hand, I did not heed his very sound advice to order the Ultra with tubes. And it is sound advice. But.......... I kept my order tubeless and ordered a full cryo'ed set of these National NOS tubes. And of course, a variety of 0A3s and alternatives, a Mullard GZ37 and some other rectifier alternatives, to go along with some very nice NOS Sylvania, Mullard, and SED Winged C I already have. See, this is how I am keeping myself from gnawing off any more extremities in anticipation. I will build a little worksheet of tube combinations to start with for the Ultra and the Toriis, break them in, make notes, and then attempt to exercise some self-discipline as I listen, live with each combo for a while, and record impressions.

I also ended up getting two ZRACKs of the taller size that Steve recommended.

That spreadsheet idea is a good one, Greg. Keep us updated with your impressions. There are some great posts here about tube combinations. I am almost tempted to copy and paste all the posts (with the authors' permissions, of course), into one thread. Maintaining it becomes another matter...

Pale Rider, sounds like fun. Are you consolidating systems into one or expanding a two channel?

A bit of both. For a variety of reasons, my HT and my listening room are the same. Historically, my critical listening has been via headphone. The ULTRA made me decide to change that. So, going all in: ULTRA, two Toriis, an 84ZS and 3 pairs of ERRs.

Wow, that is a beautiful system. Let me know the details around dialing in the sound after Zen Ultra break-in. I'd be most interested. I have a similar plan except I want to consolidate two systems. Wife would really like to get upstairs main room back. It's got a full blown two channel set up. tThe problem is selling stuff nowadays is not that easy I am finding out unless I cut prices way down to serious loss and I do not like that but may have no choice or put everything in attic.

I hear you ltm. I sold some stuff at a loss, thinking it better that it have a home. The only Decware equipment I have now are the Taboo, ZSTAGE, interconnects and power cords. But those were enough to convince me I had found something that could be my end game for some time to come. So, I took the plunge. Will definitely keep the group apprised of progress. Should be easy to break the Ultra in, because I won't have anything to connect it to for a while. Will hook it up to the Oppo, play the Esoteric Isotek CD for about a thousand hours.